Unspoken
by fhobos
Summary: A Naruto/Sakura Anthology, ranging from comedy to tragedy, from AUs to canon. Number 3: fraught with imagined doom
1. first date

**A/N: **Just a in-progress collection of NaruSaku shorts I'd put up on my tumblr. Drabbles, one-shots, ranging from everything from comedy to tragedy. Some posts may be connected, most won't. Just look at the notes!

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**1**

_first date_

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"Sakura-chan," said Naruto, gripping her shoulders and suddenly directing a fiercely somber look at her that she could do nothing except widen her eyes.

"Naruto, what - - what is it, you want to go to a different restaurant? If you want ramen that much we can go to Ginnabe as a compromise - - "

"I'm going to kiss you," he announced. "Er, wait, I mean - - can I kiss you? Will you let me kiss you? It's polite to ask first, right? Um." He cursed softly, felt his cheeks warming. Ever since they had started dating, Naruto had resolved to take the initiative in _'wooing'_ Sakura - - _'wooing'_ being Sai's choice of word, gleaned from a yellowed library book entitled, _The Gentleman's Guide to Romance._

"…Sakura-chan," he said, her name vibrating over her skin, he was so close. Was it possible for a person to turn into a tomato? He was so red she was beginning to worry that he would give himself a fever. "Can you - - erm - - close your eyes?"

Sakura felt his breath fanning over her lips and she screwed her eyes shut, her face heating up. She waited. How did one breathe, again? Air was required, yes, and then what? Right, the lungs had to work, in, out - -

Naruto sighed and his head sagged. "Sorry, Sakura-chan, I - - I can't," he mumbled, and he seemed to sense her hurt and disappointment because he shot up, looked straight into her eyes and said, "Just the thought of kissing you is enough to make me so happy I could die right now!"

The heads of some passerbys swiveled in their direction, catching Naruto's declaration. Raised brows, giggles behind closed palms, but Sakura did not care for the attention they had garnered. How could she look away from Naruto, whose wholehearted attention shined upon her like a blue beacon?

Sakura smiled, happiness warming her heart, electrifying her to her toes. "It'll just happen naturally, right?"

She linked arms with him as he laughed boyishly. They walked into the restaurant, showered by a chorus of _"Irrashaimase!"_

As long as he continued to laugh like that, she didn't care how long it took them to properly kiss.


	2. grave

**A/N: None.**

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**2**

_grave_

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"What good would I be if I couldn't make you stop crying?"

Naruto's warm breath on her lips smelled like the oranges he had been eating, that she had been peeling before she had remembered someone else who had loved oranges, her father, who can never eat them now.

She felt lips on hers and she said around his mouth, "You kiss people to stop crying?"

Naruto broke contact and pressed his forehead to hers. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." He smiled. "It's a hit or a miss."

And it does work because she was laughing quietly, a smile between wet cheeks.

"Let's go," said Naruto, slipping an arm around her waist.

She would place a bowl of oranges at Haruno Kizashi's grave.


	3. fraught with imagined doom

**A/N: None.**

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**3**

_fraught with imagined doom_

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They had been enjoying the warmth of hard-earned sunshine on their bare arms and legs, sprawled side by side on a picnic blanket Sakura had found from within her closet, in a box labeled, _to use when you find the one, _when without warning Naruto arose from his nap, turned to her with a stricken expression, clutched her hands and squeezed three heartbeats, and said, "Sakura-chan, Sakura-chan, Sakura-chan."

"Naruto," she pushed through a mouthful of sleep, "What is it?"

She felt a chill over her. She opened her eyes. It was not a cloud portending rain, as she had thought, but Naruto, wet-cheeked and huddled over her like a lost child.

"What is it?" she repeated, alarmed. She sat upright and he shot forward, arms roping around her waist, his face burrowing against her neck like he could disappear within the hollow of her collarbone.

"I had a dream that you died," he said, words thick with horror. "You died in one of those hospital beds you're always hovering over, treating patients, except this time it was _you_. You died at night and I had to live in the morning, and the morning after, and the morning after that. I felt empty and sick and thought nothing would ever be the same, I would never even want the taste of ramen again."

She propped a hand under her chin. "It was only a dream, Naruto."

"Does it matter?" he said, finally letting her go just enough so he could pin her with his eyes, make her feel like a firefly stunned before the sun.

"It doesn't," she conceded gently. "It will happen, and when it does, you'll move on - - "

"That's exactly what scares me," he said, clutching her hands once again, as if his imagined loss could be transferred through the touching of their wrists. "Sakura-chan, in the dream, _I_ _moved on_. I let you go, somehow, I did, it might've taken twenty years and I might've been drawing my last breath or, or, or fishing - - you know I _hate _fishing - - but I'd _moved on._"

She opened her mouth. Naruto curved around her waist. "Sakura-chan, don't tell me to let go. I finally, _finally, _have you and I'm so tired of letting go of the people I love."

And Sakura smiled because she wasn't going to say that. She wriggled her hands free from his grip. She reached up, smoothed his hair, thumbed away the drying tear tracks.

"Look at me, Naruto," she said, and he did that. He looked at her smiling lips, her little nose he liked to poke, her green eyes rimmed with lashes, the mascara she had swiped that morning while he had watched from the bathroom doorway, chuckling at the way her pink tongue stuck out in concentration. He saw the laugh-lines beginning to crease the edge of her lips, the ones she had at first tried to iron out by not smiling as often, but had come to accept as a fact of age after his efforts at making her laugh proved too much for her to contain. Naruto saw their history in her face, their past, present and future, and just as she had accepted her imagined fears, he would have to accept his.

He sighed and the fear, which had seemed to loom so large before, now flew off like frightened ghosts. He cupped her cheek, kissed her eyelids.

"All right, I'll do as you say," he said. He added, just to make her laugh, "Sasuke was right, you _are _demanding."

And she did.

And the knot inside him loosened, just a bit more, and it was enough.


End file.
